I looked through old topics out of morbid curiosity, and came across this.

It's kinda amusing to see what games I wanted then, and which ones I skipped over/was disappointed with. Those three I initially listed, I ignored Grandia III and ToL, and only got WA4 recently because it was $20. Then of the ones I listed I was looking forward too, I never got CoM and Metal Saga and probably never will unless I see them for five bucks locally, won't touch SD4... And Mother 3, uhh, is in the mail. Heck, I only beat Zelda and PSU of those games listed, and PSU's interest died right when Zelda hit and will probably never reignite. While I haven't beaten it, I have played Oblivion enough that I could've beat it. However, two games I didn't expect much of, SuikV and XSIII turned out to be pleasant surprises, though I only played about a third of SuikV.

And if people wanna throw in their current anticipated games, I'll start: All the X360 RPGs except for Two Worlds, which I'm merely curious about, FFXIII has my interest, I'd like to grab Pokemon Diamond/Pearl and DQIX... Depending on your view, Super Paper Mario goes here too. I'll also keep a vain hope for an english Mother 3; it doesn't seem normal to me to release soundtracks on iTunes for things that will never come out here.

I didn't post there specifically, but I remember saying SMT:Devil summoner was so chock full of style with it's setting and art that they'd have to seriously fuck up the gameplay for me not to like it.

And you know what? They fucked up the gameplay. Simple gameplay, but that doesn't nessasarily mean bad. Simple gameplay with unresponsive controls though, sucks ass. Yet I STILL liked it anyway, just because everything else was so cool.

Let's see, what else...

VP2 I think delivered.

Kingdom hearts 2 was really good, but despite some originals(Like going black and white on us) there was too much going back to the same places we went the first game. But as the game was better that's easy to overlook. KH3 though, better not be having us going through agrabah and halloween town again.

Xenosaga III I was wary about, but it turned out to be great. The story was better because they actually had to TELL it instead of dragging it out 3 more games. The battle system was actually FUN. Mech battles didn't have the gameplay of non-mech battles, but did something both XS 1 and 2 AND xenogears didn't. It got the 'feel' of it right. These giant robots came off as badass and it was a joy to tear shit up with them.

Suikoden V was a blast. A lot of talk once it came out of it being 'even better than II'. While actually playing it I felt it was competing as well. Although now quite a bit of time after playing it SII definantly stands out more in my mind, then again that could just be because I played it several times :P

I would have to say that the most anticipated games that I'm waiting for in the RPG realm would be on all platforms, sigh....how financially depressing : P but while I'm at it, I'll mention all non-RPG titles aswell.

I'll start with the 360:

Mass Effect. I'm a big BioWare fan, what can I say? They're one of the western developers that haven't realesed something I haven't liked. KOTOR blew me away, Jade Empire was very nice and the Buldar's Gate series has been very rewarding. Which is why I have very high expections for Mass Effect. Winning many awards from last year's showing of E3, I can safely say that this will be something much more than what KOTOR ever was, which is quite literally unimaginable.

Lost Oddysee. I wanted to add Blue Dragon to my most anticipated, but to save time I've only added this title, mainly because I'm more excited about this project for many reasons that I won't delve into. Tradition keeps it's toll here but with a modern twist, very nice indeed. I can't wait.

Super Paper Mario. Ryouta Kawade! My favourite Intelligent Systems game designer. The Paper Mario series is an absolute favourite of mine and Super Paper Mario is one of the most anticipated Wii titles for me this year. I just love the whole illuminous concept of 2nd and 3rd dimensions being seemlessly interjected with one another, truly ingenius!

Super Mario Galaxy. A fully interactive platformer in 3D space via mininal camera navigation? If it holds true it's claims then this is THE true sequel to Super Mario World 2.

Final Fantasy XIII. My most anticipated PS3 title. I never cared to give it enough attention until recently, when I heard Toshiro Tsuchida was the battle director....I leaped like a frog right onto the lillypad of undivided attention! Soon after, I discovered partial information of the ATB system and also hearing the concept of how the summons come into play. My anticipation accelerated into oblivion.

White Knight Story. Level 5 hasn't had something as ambitous as this project in quite awhile. I've got high expectations, just please don't do a Rogue Galaxy II on me Level....5 : \

Lair. Dragons, Knights, Factor 5? It's on the list.

Ninja Gaiden Sigma and Devil May Cry 4. Action projects not to be ignored...ever.

EDIT: Upon my recollection, I now remember eagerly anticipating Dragon Quest VIII: The Journey Of The Cursed King and was severly dissapointed, I found it to be bland and really boring as a whole.

Shadow Hearts: FTNW - Worst of the series IMO. I had to force myself to finish it. In fact I quit playing games for a couple of months because I have a rule about playing only one game of a particular genre on a single console.

Metal Saga and Steambot Chronicles - They just couldn't keep my interest. I think it's because I could wander in the game and do whatever, I was lacking an impetus to finish the game.

I think I only listed those since they came out in the begining of the year. My favorites of 2006 were released in the later part (XSIII and BKO). Nothing is really coming out too soon here, so I'll list all I can think of.

So for my 2007 RPG watch-list:WA5Persona 3Odin SphereGrim GrimoreAI:Grand FantasmOpoona (not sure what to make of it yet, but it's for the Wii)

OtherSuper Paper MarioSam and Max Season I for the Wii (if this happens)

God, I had totally forgotten about that thread, and what I was looking forward to. And of the games I listed I still haven't played Ar Tonelico.

Disgaea 2:Very much a disappointment. Still haven't played more than 2 hours of this crap - the characters totally ruined it for me. Adell and Rozalin are, still, very poor replacements for Laharl and Flonne.

Devil Summoner: Kuzunoha Raidou:Okay, I haven't played this as much as I really should've, but I'm still disappointed in it. Horrible music and a lackluster battle system ensures that I most likely will never end up finishing this one, even though I generally love the SMT games.

Rogue Galaxy:Battle system is okay and graphics are beautiful, but the characters, story and horrible inventory management kills the game. I'm so disappointed with this game. I really, really want to like it but.. I just can't.

Shadow Hearts: From the New World:I liked this game a lot more than most, it seems. Sure, it was nowhere close to as good as Covenant, but I still had a lot of fun while playing it. It neither impressed nor disappointed - I had fairly reasonable expectations on it.

Kingdom Hearts 2:What I said about SH: FTNW can be applied to Kingdom Hearts 2 as well. It was fun, and pretty much what I had expected. And a huge improvement on the first game.

Final Fantasy XII:I loved this. One of my favourite Final Fantasy games. It brought some much-needed change to the series, and had a storyline that was a fresh change from the usual 'save the world' angle. Add beautiful graphics, an excellent localization, superb voice acting and tonnes of optional stuff and you have a real winner. It was even better than I thought it'd be.

So. Three disappointments, and three games that I actually ended up liking.

I was looking forward to FFXII, but that demo kinda killed my interest in it. I said the same thing about the DQ8 demo though, so who knows? :P

I obviously need to stay the fuck away from demos. :P

I'm not really looking forward to any RPGs at the moment. I'm not getting one of the new consoles anytime soon, so there's no point salivating over/bitching about anything that's gonna come out on them.

Twilight Princess: This game was delayed consistently by Nintendo, and the frustration of us Zelda fans honestly couldn't get any higher, unless the game was canceled. The day it was coming out, I camped outside of a Best Buy for 14 hours. This wasn't just going to be a great game, I told myself, but one of the greatest games ever! Indeed, my hands shaking from the cold, I entered the store and handed the clerk a wad of cash, around $320, sniffling as I thanked them and headed home.

I didn't sleep that night. It didn't matter that I had been up for around 30 hours on pure hype already, I had to play this game. I hooked up my Wii and played about 6 hours straight, completely being blown away by the game.

Every day I would wake up just to play Twilight Princess, The Wii was immediately on and I loved every minute of the adventure. Just how long could this game be? It was really taking Zelda in a next-gen step, at least in it's presentation and quality.

I did indeed finish the game after a few days of power-gaming. However, my outlook on the game wasn't as bright as it was while waiting to buy it and playing the first few dungeons. The game was clearly not finished, the spit shine on the first half of the dungeons and development in between them was nowhere to be found later in the game. The Dungeons did not scale up in difficulty enough, and the bosses were absurdly easy. The game has major flaws, at least for a big fan of the genre or just the Zelda series itself.

It did leave a bitter taste in my mouth, the last two dungeons were almost laughably short and easy. The Final Boss barely pricked my health with each attack. I left the game disappointed. Perhaps this would have been challenging for a Nintendo 64 game, when gamers had never experienced a action adventure 3d title, but it's 10 years later and I just expected more, especially for a game that was pushed back from it's 2005 release date.

As a standalone game, it's great, definitely deserving of a good score on any site, but as a ZELDA game, I wouldn't give it higher than a 9, and it definitely wasn't worth the money I payed for the console.

You have to admit, yelling 'biggest disappointment of my life' then talking about how you powergamed through it and would only give it a 9 versus a 10 (or 11?) that you would apparently give other Zeldas makes it hard to take that statement seriously. :P

OMG I was anticipating Chulip. For the amount of waiting I did, with the amount of hype I had over the quirky japanese kissing game, I think Chulip qualifies for the "biggest let down" race.

Chulip is definitely quirky but it's kinda boring and freaking hard. Not to mention I don't even like the girl that the main guy likes. She doesn't want to kiss you because you don't have enough experience! What the hell! How am I supposed to be motivated to continue the game when I think the female protagonist is a superficial, shallow @#$%. The characters in town are weird but you don't really get to know them. You just ambush them, lay one on them and get paid for it. Yeah I know, it makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside. OMG, this game fills me with so much ire.

You have to admit, yelling 'biggest disappointment of my life' then talking about how you powergamed through it and would only give it a 9 versus a 10 (or 11?) that you would apparently give other Zeldas makes it hard to take that statement seriously. :P

Plus at least it wasn't Chulip you were anticipating.

Aha, but you see I believed the game to be so much more. It's not about the quality of the final product, but the build up of anticipation and expectations.

Valkyrie Profile 2:VP2 was actually better than I expected it to be. I knew it would be good and all, but I was a bit skeptical about the way it went into a more traditional route than its predecessor. But as I began the game, I was blown away for the first two chapters (even though they were short). Then Chapter 3 hit, and the game stayed awesome, but I wasn't blown away due to nothing happening 90% of the time.

Then Chapter four came, and I started to be blown away again. The game became very easy, but the art direction, cutscene, and music just came to a level I hadn't seen in an RPG since FFVI. The build up to the ending was fantastic, and the final dungeon is one of the most memorable dungeons I have ever come across.

Unfortunately, some things did bog it down. Some things about the battle system bugged me. Mainly the complicated environments. I personally would have preferred just simple ones like in Radiata Stories or Star Ocean 3. But the complicated ones in VP2 caused many annoying problems, the main one happening when getting stuck on the wall while dashing. But overall, the battle system was excellent.

Rogue Galaxy:Nothing much to say about this except it was BORING.

Children of Mana:The absolute most pointless game I've ever played. But I still loved it. I have no real explanations as to why. I just did.

This year, I am most anticipating, in no particular order:

-Trusty Bell-Seiken Densetsu 4 (yeah, I know, but I've played it a bit and it was fun)-Infinite Undiscovery (if it gets released in Japan this year)-Rune Factory